Currently there are three individuals involved with Pulse 2.0.  Amit Chowdhry, Mo Kakwan, and Shan Sadiq.  We’ve pretty much been a team and worked with each other on various web projects since 1999.  We spent 3-4 hours yesterday planning on how we should give Pulse2.com a new look.

First thing we knew is that we wanted it to be simple and unique from other existing technology blogs with a major focus on content.   The white background and the navigation at the very top symbolized the simplicity of the new look.  One of the unique aspects of the site is that we’ve dropped the author title for each blog post.  This is because that we figure that it doesn’t matter who wrote the article, what matters is the content! 

When we read an article from TechCrunch or GigaOm or Mashable or Profy or ReadWriteWeb or paidContent, we just care about the information that is on each blog post and don’t pay much attention to who actually wrote the article.  This is the same case for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.  The name is always there.  We decided that we want to make a goal for 2008 to increase the amount of content on Pulse 2.0.

Shan is very skilled at using AJAX, JavaScript, MySQL and other web technologies and he wants to use his knowledge to create some sort of free flow of information within Pulse 2.0 by putting sample scripts.  We hope to fully deploy this feature shortly. 

The logo change is currently just a placeholder for now.  We may change it within a couple weeks.  And lastly, we encourage any feedback that you may have.  Thanks for reading and have a great year!

I have to admit, I don’t often see myself reading Robert Scoble’s blog, Scobleizer. However, I admit that I read the man’s twitters. Why do I read his twitters? Because I believe that he is an influential person in tech. And I wouldn’t be able to read his twitters if he decided to follow me but I chose not to follow him.

So when I logged into Netvibes and I saw my Twitter subscriptions RSS feed saying that Scoble wrote on Twitter: “The real power of Twitter is in FOLLOWING, not being followed,” I just had to contemplate what that meant. And what I interepret that twitter by Scoble meant was that essentially information is power. And you have to seek it. It won’t come to you.

Thought provoking.

National Lampoon, Inc. announced today that they are forming a partnership with Capazoo.  Capazoo is a social network that pays their users based on how much content they submit.  In the National Lampoon/Capazoo partnership, National Lampoon will provide video content and marketing opportunities.

National Lampoon also bought some equity stake in Capazoo.

National Lampoon has various marketing platforms that Capazoo will have access to including the National Lampoon Radio Network, National Lampoon College (in-dorm cable network), feature films, online and offline sponsored events, and the National Lampoon Humor Network.

National Lampoon’s channel is available at: http://www.capazoo.com/nationallampoon.

“We are excited to be working with Capazoo.”
“This partnership illustrates the strength of the National Lampoon brand today. We can provide partners with tremendously popular content as well as unrivalled access to a key demographic through our varied entertainment platforms. The unique membership-driven economy model of Capazoo represents a major step forward in social networking that will benefit not only National Lampoon, but our entire audience both on and off the Web.”

-Daniel S. Laikin, President and CEO of National Lampoon.

Funny or Die, the slapstick video hub created by former Saturday Night Live cast member, Will Ferrell announced that they have raised $15 million from Sequoia and several other unnamed investors.  Funny or Die is especially known for its viral video, The Landlord in which a baby abuses Will to pay the rent… or else.

Sequoia has backed Funny or Die since it started around April 2007.  Gary Sanchez Productions and Adam McKay are also heavily involved with Funny or Die.  Adam McKay also co-wrote Anchorman: The Legend of Run Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby with Will Ferrell.  Adam McKay’s daughter, Pearl played the actual landlord on the Funny or Die video clip, The Landlord.  McKay is married to Shira Piven, sister of Jeremy Piven (Ari Gold on HBO’s Entourage and Dean Pritchard in Old School).

Funny or Die plans to use the funds to hire engineering and creative talent. Currently there are 30 staff members working with Funny or Die and the company is developing a model to compensate users that submit viral content.  It certainly is refreshing to see Hollywood embracing the entrepreneurial Web 2.0 spirit.

Information Source:
[1] Portfolio.com: Will Ferrell and the End of Media as We Know It

Wasserman Media Group is rumored to be in talks with Comcast, ESPN, and FOX about a potential acquisition or investment for Sportnet.  Sportnet started in 2005 and is one of WMG’s subsidiaries.  WMG is one of the largest sports agencies with offices based in Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Charlotte, Carlsbad, and London. 

Sportnet was founded to aggregate websites and advertisers across various sports websites including motocross.com, and ryansheckler.com.  Montgomery & Co. has valuated Sportnet at $50 million.  WMG has also previously invested in Prep Sports Online and TAKKLE, two high school sports networks.

Information Source:
[1] paidContent: Wasserman May Sell Or Get Invetsment For Sportnet Online Sports Network

hi5 Networks Inc., Qloud, and iLike have collaborated using Google’s OpenSocial software to deliver two new music applications.  The two new applications will leverage hi5’s 70 million user count to provide the service that is similar to Facebook’s iLike music application.  These two applications are the first to use OpenSocial to go live on hi5.

“We are very pleased to increase the depth of our music offering for our members around the world, making it easier for them to find, listen to and post more of the music they like on their hi5 profiles.”
“These collaborations with iLike and Qloud really demonstrate how well the OpenSocial initiative can make it simpler for developers to build useful, fun and engaging applications for hi5 users.”

-Ramu Yalamanchi, CEO and Co-Founder of hi5 Networks.

The iLike application will give hi5 users the ability to embed songs and videos within their profiles.  And the Qloud My Music application will allow users to legally play songs and videos directly from their iTunes libraries within their profiles.

hi5 is based in San Francisco, Calif. and started in 2003.  The iLike hi5 music application is also available in Spanish.

1. PEOPLE’S CHOICE

Mainstream and Large Social Networks

Applications and Widgets

Social News and Social Bookmarking

Social Search

Sports and Fitness

Photo Sharing

Video Sharing

Start Pages

Places and Events

Music

Social Shopping

Mobile

Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

2. JUDGE’S CHOICE

These sites were chosen from the nominees list by top bloggers from more than 30 partner blogs. This is a confirmation of the results posted earlier this week.

Mainstream and Large Social Networks

Applications and Widgets

Social News and Social Bookmarking

Social Search

Sports and Fitness

Photo Sharing

Video Sharing

Start Pages

Places and Events

Music

Social Shopping

Mobile

Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

Open Web Awards Blog Partners
Techdirt
/Message
Blognation
Andy Beard
Collective Thoughts
Gadgetell
Watch Mojo
How to Split an Atom
Luca Filigheddu.com
Marketing Pilgrim
Pulse 2.0
ParisLemon
UnBlogged (Spanish)
Stuff We Like
Kineda
Crenk
WebAppers
RotorBlog
Small Business Trends
Skype Journal
BuzzMag (Czech)
Disruptive Conversations
Akimoto@CybozuLabs (Japanese)
BlogOnExpo
Under the Radar
Alarm:Clock
901am
LiewCF
Social Networking Watch
Download Squad

DIGG
The acquisitions that Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, and eBay have made over the last year has made
things a lot more interesting. Between these 4 companies, they have acquired social networks and VoIP technologies that have banking companies swooning just like they were in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.

During Digg’s tenure as a Web 2.0 company, they have received over $10 million in funding. Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg has also been working on a couple of other start-ups, Revision3 and Pownce. Rumor has it that Digg CEO, Jay Adelson has hired Allen and Company, an investment banking firm to broker a deal worth $300 million or more in the form of an acquisition. Rumor also has is that InterActivCorp is one of the leading interested parties in an acquisition.

In my opinion, I think Digg is great property for an acquisition. But for the amount that they are looking for seems a little stretched. I think this because I feel that Digg users seem rather unstable and are constantly being tampered with. In the last couple of years, Digg has removed the listing of their top users, created a new social network that involves “Shouting Out” stories to other users (which seems more like spam to me), and even saw a major user revolt late April/early May 2007 (remember 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56…. controversy?). Digg gives a lot of control to the end user which can be a strength, but can also be a major weakness. Digg users tend to be sensitive and over-express it when they feel like Kevin Rose/ Digg isn’t acting like “one of the people.”

Will Digg see an acquisition soon? So far it’s only speculation since there have been multiple opportunities for Digg to become acquired.

BEBO
Social network, Bebo is also rumored to have hired a bank in order to either raise a substantial amount of funding or for an acquisition. Bebo reports that they have more than 40 million total users, of which 12 million are active in the UK and Ireland. Traffic has doubled since last year for Bebo. I picked up the rumor from VentureBeat.

Bebo is also working with Google on OpenSocial, an open-source developer platform to let third parties create applications on their own social network, similar to Facebook Applications. Bebo has reportedly seen itself being courted for an acquisition before, but none that have gauged its interest of a price-tag above $1 billion.

Social networks are a hot commodity, but with other social networks like MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Hi5, and Orkut, the market is just becoming more saturated. Brokering such a deal through a bank will be challeging given today’s market.

On the official Google Webmaster Central Blog, John Fisher-Ogden and Amy Wu announced that in order to help users search for public videos, the Google Video team joined the Google Sitemaps team to create Video Sitemaps.  Video Sitemaps essentially indexes your videos based on the metadata that you provide.  The metadata is then crawled by Google Video after you submit the video, making it so that Google Video users can find your content without having to upload a video.

An example of the Video Sitemap XML code:

<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9”
     xmlns:video=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.0“>
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
   <video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/video123.flv</video:content_loc>
   <video:player_loc allow_embed=”yes”>http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123
</video:player_loc>
   <video:title>My funny video</video:title>
   <video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg
</video:thumbnail_loc>
</video:video>
</url>

<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_other_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
   <video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/videos/video1.mpg
</video:content_loc>
   <video:description>A really awesome video</video:description>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>

As you will notice, the Video Sitemap asks you to provide information such as the video title, duration, description, video location, and thumbnail location.  Google Video can crawl videos that are MPGs, MPEGs, MP4s, MOVs, WMVs, ASFs, AVIs, RAs, RAMs, RMs, and FLVs.

More information about using Video Sitemaps is available here.